>>>>>What I don't get is how anyone falls for this stuff. And they must or it would stop. Are people really that stupid? Same with the morons who go to a bank to give someone money to get more money. Idiots.
>>>>
>>>>Many are vulnerable for one reason or another:
>>>>
>>>>http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/15/060515fa_fact
>>>>
>>>>This American Life recently had a story about scamming the scammers
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>http://consumerist.com/5050068/listen-to-these-vigilantes-scam-nigerian-419-scammers
>>>
>>>I don't get that article. He wasn't a victim. True, he followed through with it further than anyone I know, afterall, most just recognize it as spam and delete, but he did verify with the bank and didn't lose any money, correct? I guess he could be considered a victim in the sense that he lost time devoted to verifying...
>>>
>>>As promised, in late August, 2001, Worley received a check for forty-seven thousand five hundred dollars, purportedly from one such investor. It was from an account belonging to the Syms Corporation, the discount-clothing chain whose slogan is “An Educated Consumer Is Our Best Customer.” Worley was wary. He called the Fleet Bank in Portland, Maine, where the check had been drawn. The bank told him it was an altered duplicate of a check that Syms had paid to the Maryland office of an international luggage manufacturer.
>>
>>There are 6 pages to the article, you need to read at least page 2 and 3. He does send money.
>
>He goes way beyond that. He researched ways to sneak the money into the U.S., and borrowed from a patient in violation of any sort of doctor-patient ethics. The guy was a crook who got took.
>
>Besides, first he gets a degree in psychology, then he starts up in the God business. Very nice combination for a scammer.
>
>Tough! The only people I feel for at all in this are his wife and his patient.

Yeah, I would like to clarify that my position is that I feel sorry for him in the way you feel sorry for someone who lets their life run out of control and drop to the floor like a horse crapping on the street on a hot muggy day in NYC.